September 12, 2014 - 09:34
I. Coursekeeping:
names?
for Thursday, read Jenny Cameron, Stephen Healy, and J.K. Gibson-Graham's Chapter 4:
"Take Back the Market: Encountering Others." Take Back the Economy.
During class, we will work in pairs to design 10-week long projects exploring
your extended "contact zones," by documenting your activities of consumption:
how your buying practices are forms of "encountering others." So read the text with this in mind:
which of the various activities the authors propose might you want to pick up on or play with?
What do you want to know about the patterns of your own daily life, desire, consumption, worry?
By 5 p.m. Fri, 9/19: third "web event" describing the "consumption" project you plan to pursue:
this will be written in pairs: How will you trace your spending habits,
so that you can identify your "encounters" with others? What else do you hope to learn?
Select the format that best communicates your shared plan;
think about "Take Back the Economy' as a formal model here
(they have charts, and images, and lists, and bullet points...)
reminder TO TAG ALL FRIDAY PROJECTS as "web papers"
(Sydney, Allie, untag your "class discussion notes").
Selena, Nayanthi--need to re-schedule your conferences next Thursday
(the provost pre-empted us, with a 360 steering committee mtg...)
II. let's talk about your posts reflecting on the possibility/usefulness/costs of empathy:
some of you thought it was essential, some of you thought it was very difficult to achieve,
and some of you thought it was the first step in any connection...
R_Massey: Empathy...is the glue that holds human societies together....
Upon realizing that someone is of mixed race, I feel an immediate connection.
Whether they grew up in cultures different than mine, I know that they probably
know my same struggle for identity or can help me find clarification in it. It is the
knowing, the feeling, the recognition of the emotional ups and downs of those
around us that allow us to truly find solace that we are not alone.
[Weilla on the lonely emperor's wives, warming themselves by sharing tea...]
rokoyo: It killed me, because I wanted desperately to help her in any way,
but at the same time I couldn’t be around her. This kind of guilt was extremely
hard to carry. So I distanced myself from her. I abandoned her because I saw
in myself similar emotions to what she was carrying, and attempts at empathy
not only didn’t help her, but made me feel worse.
Gmchung: I think empathy is the first step to the contact zone. In order for
a contact zone to be opened, the dominant culture/person must feel
empathetic towards the plight of the less advantaged culture/person.
Empathy allows the more dominant one to listen.
So: what does this have to do w/ the conversation about racial difference here,
which was held in the Campus Center last night? (who was there...?)
And how does it connect w/ the essay by Minnie Bruce Pratt?
How does her essay extend these ideas?
IV. “Identity: Skin, Blood, Heart.”
take a minute, look through your notes, find a line that you want to read--
listen to Pratt's voice, as we go around...
how do you hear this/take it up?
"If you and I met today, reader, on Maryland Avenue, would we speak?"
[remember the priviledged white women whom Jordan encountered?]